


Joy Be the Consequence

by hopelessbookgeek



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Fake AH Crew, GTA AU, Gen, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-11 21:50:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5643178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopelessbookgeek/pseuds/hopelessbookgeek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack's been dead for a year, supposedly. Geoff holds out hope and it seems like his faith has been rewarded. But that which is precious and lost is rarely in the same condition when it's found, and it all has the potential to go horribly wrong...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lazarus Rises

**Author's Note:**

> This is... the most fucked up thing I've ever written.

“ _Michael! You gotta fuckin’ move, buddy!_ ” Geoff’s voice crackled from his headset, gunfire popping behind him.

“How about you pay attention to your own fuckin’ escape!” Michael shouted back, clutching Jack’s leather jacket. The bike thrummed beneath him, a living beast of steel and smoke and one hell of a bad temper. He hated riding bitch, but if anyone could navigate a bike to safety, it’d be Jack. “Gav’s got the money, right?”

Gavin’s voice was lower than it normally was; during a heist he was whiskey and bass instead of honey tenor, and it was a lifeline Michael clung to when the cop lights glittered onto the road. “ _Got the money, Michael. Ray and I heading north. Over and out_.”

Ah, Geoff wouldn’t like that. He liked them to be connected at all times, knowing when someone went down, knowing who he should be looking out for. Gavin’s _over and out_ meant he didn’t think it was safe to keep talking, either afraid he’d be heard or unable to focus on more than one thing. He’d always come out the other side just fine but one of these days he wouldn’t, and Michael, like Geoff, wanted to know when.

“Jack!” The wind whipped the sound away as soon as he made it. “ _Jack!_ Can’t this heap of shit go any faster?”

“Not if you still want to be on it!” Still, Jack accelerated, weaving through traffic and trying to dodge the police. You didn’t make a lot of friends as criminals. It looked like they might actually outrun the cops this time, that maybe with limited trouble they’d be okay…

Until the cop got in a lucky shot, and their back tire blew.

For the first time, Michael _screamed_ , pain and horror flooding his veins as he was thrown from the bike with all the momentum it still had. Watering eyes were offered a tremendous view of the panorama sunset.

_Lindsay would love the view_ , he thought, before he hit the ground.

***

He woke up many hours later in a forest of damp weeds by the side of the highway. This far out of Los Santos, the stars numbered in the thousands, and the wind seemed to whisper to him: _you lost, you lost, you lost_. He stumbled to a standing position just in time to promptly vomit on his shoes. _Concussion_ , he guessed. _Broken ribs, left side. Broken leg?_ The shock dulled the pain, and he was used to pain. Geoff would stitch him up back home, but right now all he wanted was a line, a shot, something, anything.

He fumbled for his headset. “Geoff?” His voice was thick, rough. It came out in a hoarse whimper. He cleared his throat and tried again, because damned if Michael Jones was gonna die on the side of the road. Not without his cut, at least. “Geoff!”

“ _Michael! Oh, thank fucking Christ. Where are you?_ ”

“S-side of the… oh, fuck.” He had to sink to sit on the guardrail as an Adder whipped past him, the high whine of the engine disorienting. “Highway. On our way north, tire blew on the bike… Jack–” He pulled away from the headset to curse violently at length. “Tell me you got Jack.”

No answer. Strange, but not as strange as the fact that no one had found him, that there weren’t any cops around, that really, there was _no one_ around. Leg throbbing with pain that the cloudiness in his head couldn’t fully ignore, he lurched down the highway towards where he thought the bike had gone down. There was an oily puddle of blood that had come from him, judging by the blood on his hands and jeans, but nothing else.

When Geoff and Ryan picked him up twenty minutes later, they found him staring at a blank stretch of asphalt with no evidence that Jack had ever been there at all.

**(One year later)**

Geoff was poring over the newspaper when Michael came down into the kitchen, yawning and already grumbling obscenities under his breath. Geoff glanced up briefly before returning to his studies. “You look like shit.”

“Yup,” Michael replied, tossing a box of cereal onto the counter and limping to the fridge for milk. “Still wasting your time on the obituaries?”

“It’s important to know what’s going on this city, dickhead.” Once upon a time the curse would have been a term of endearment, but now it was edged in steel. “And I don’t give up as easily as you do, if what I heard last night was any–”

“Ooh, ooh, lemme finish it this time. Michael Jones has a tiny penis! Michael Jones is a two-pump chump! Michael Jones can’t satisfy his wife! Did I get it right? Which one was it?”  
Geoff shook out the paper and folded it so that one particular obituary was clearly visible. “I’ll let you decide.”

Michael mumbled a handful more curses and went to pour his cereal into the bowl, but the never-quite-set-properly crack in his ribs caused his chest to seize in sudden pain and the box slipped from his grasp, spilling all over the counter. “Fucking _Christ!_ ” The shout was punctuated by the shattering of the bowl as he threw it to the floor in anger and disgust. “I never fucking…” He threw himself onto the kitchen stool, resting his elbows on the counter and dropping his face into his hands.

With a sigh, Geoff pulled himself to his feet and went to Michael’s side, resting a hand firmly on his shoulder. It hadn’t been so long ago since he was just a kid, or maybe it had been, when the reddish hair curled damply against his neck when he slept, when they shared a motel room on the run and Geoff had awoken in the middle of the night to see Michael sitting at the edge of his bed, the pale light from the television illuminating the quickness of his hands as he polished his gun. Geoff had never had a son, or maybe he had so many, now, boys with lightning in their smile and gunpowder burns on their gangly fingers, and sometime when he wasn’t looking those angry boys had grown into angry men, irreparably broken.

“I never meant to kill him,” Michael mumbled into his own hands and Geoff swallowed back his anger.

“You don’t know he’s dead. And if he is, you didn’t kill him.”

He raised his head and squinted at Geoff through red-rimmed eyes. “Yeah? Where the fuck is he, then?”

“I– I don’t–”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He moved to stand, Geoff held him down, and then those red-rimmed eyes flashed. “Why can’t you just fucking admit it? He’s _dead_ , Geoff! You know it, I know it, the goddamn cashier at the convenience store down the street knows it! Why do you have to drag him up every damn day like it’s doing any good? God, like letting him die is any better than pulling the fucking trigger! Just let him rest in peace.”

_Rest in peace_. Michael tore away from Geoff and left the room, barely avoiding the shards of porcelain on the floor.

_Rest in peace_. Why should Jack have in death what he never had in life?

_Rest in peace_. If Geoff couldn’t know any peace, then he sure as hell wasn’t going to offer Jack that courtesy.

With another sigh, he pressed the button for the house-wide intercom system, and called for a meeting.

Nobody was happy to be woken up. Ryan looked as though he hadn’t slept all night and the leftover smudges of greasepaint under his eyes made Geoff strongly suspect he hadn’t. Gavin came downstairs in just his boxers, glaring bleary-eyed at the group as if he dared them to say anything. After the last meeting had been interrupted by Michael and Lindsay making out, Ray made the wise decision of sitting between them, but their fingers interlaced behind his head. The armchair that had once been Jack’s was left untouched and gathering dust as always in a sign of respect.  
Geoff stood in front of them all, old before his time, the familiar liaisons with liquor bringing a permanent warm flush to his cheeks and nose, his hands scarred and pitted with more injuries than he even knew where to begin counting. He could have been any old drunk but for the startling clarity in his blue eyes, youthful vigor scrubbed away by long nights and longer days like glass is worn smooth by the sea. He scratched at his unshaven chin and held up the obituary he’d read earlier.

“This obituary is dated today for a man who died early this morning– a cop, young, lived in Los Santos but worked north of the city. Name was Kerry Shawcross.”

There was a murmuring in the group. They’d had run-ins with Kerry and his team before; once you were a certain class of criminal, it wasn’t just the regular police who showed up, guns loaded, at a crime scene. Kerry hadn’t been an exemplary cop but seemed to have a sort of grudging respect for the Fake AH Crew. Round-faced and mousy, he was only twenty-three.

“Now, you’d think, young kid, promising career, cop… Cause of death should be all over this thing, right? Especially if he was killed on the job, and we know from experience he works nights. But nothing. Not even ‘died at work’ or ‘after an illness’ or anything. Which makes me think something suspicious is going on.”

“Oh, God, Geoff,” Gavin interrupted. “You dragged us all down here to spin conspiracy theories about a dead cop?”

“It’s suspicious! And the date, it’s a year to the day Jack–”

“So _that’s_ what this is about,” Ryan said, his voice a husky bass rumble. “Geoff, this isn’t the way to– now’s the time for mourning.”

“I’m not mourning anyone who isn’t dead,” Geoff replied, irritation rising. “You show me a body and–”

“It isn’t only you who miss him!” The outburst was Lindsay’s, to general surprise. “You don’t think it kills us every day to see one more chair, one more place at the table, one less voice in an argument? You don’t think we loved him too?”

“It’s not… I don’t have the _monopoly_ on loving or missing him, but I–”

“Geoff,” said Ray, his voice soft. “I’d be happy to let you do this. I really would, if it helps you heal. But you… you’re spending all your time locked away, and you’re spending all this money on alcohol and private investigators and whatever else, and we’re the ones making sacrifices for it. You don’t have the time to plan a heist, okay, except you won’t let us do it and money runs out. When you look at Ryan with that shit on his face, what d’you think he was doing? Target practice?” Ryan wiped at his eyes and cursed softly when there were black smudges on his fingers. “When Gavin comes home with some guy no one knows the name of, and then we have enough money to buy breakfast the next morning, d’you think he was doing that because he likes it?”

“I never…”

“I know. I know, Geoff. But _you’re_ making messes and _we’re_ the ones killing ourselves to clean it up. I want to get back to working as a team, throw myself into a job. I want to have a grave I can visit and money to buy flowers to bring there. I want to get to a point where I feel like I can move on but I wake up every morning drowning and just when I think I’ve reached shore you drag me back under.”

Geoff let his shoulders slouch. This wasn’t at all going the way he’d planned. “I just don’t want to give up before I have to,” he said softly.

“I know.” Regardless of what it would allow Lindsay and Michael to do, Ray hopped up and went to Geoff’s side and, surprisingly, wrapped his arms around him. Ray wasn’t much shorter than Geoff but slim, narrow-shouldered and long-legged, and Geoff couldn’t help but remember him as he was ten years ago, a scrawny kid barely hitting puberty and living on the streets. “We’re a family, right? So it’s gonna suck when we lose one of us. We’ve been preparing for that, though, right? Every time we leave the house we know we might never come back.”

Geoff allowed himself to put one arm around Ray. “I just… I never thought he’d go before me,” he said, so quietly that Ray was the only one who could hear.

Ray turned around. “Meeting, uh… ajoined.”

“Adjourned,” Geoff corrected.

“What he said.” Ryan fled into the bathroom and they could hear the sink running. Michael, Lindsay, and Gavin all went back upstairs, Gavin grumbling until Michael barked something at him that made him shut up. Ray steered Geoff to the couch and made him sit, and then curled up beside him with his knees pulled him to his chest. “Are you gonna be okay, Geoff?”

“Sure,” he said, out of instinct, never stopping to think about whether he would be.

“C’mon, man. Seriously. I know we don’t, like… talk about our feelings much or whatever, but I really do think of us as family. And, well, there’s only one reason anyone drinks as much as you do. There’s gotta be a faster way to kill yourself.”

_Kill yourself_. The phrase fluttered around Geoff’s mind like a butterfly. Was that what he’d been doing? Had he been trying to kill himself? He hadn’t directly thought about it, but he’d always been the heavy drinker, the on-off drug addict, the one who’d lost the most and risked the most. He should never have been the one to outlive the others, let alone Jack, steady, dependable Jack. Jack, who hadn’t so much as touched a joint in years. Jack, the getaway diver. Jack, who had never killed a man. “How dare he,” Geoff heard himself say, as though it were someone else’s voice. “How dare he die before me.”

It was the first time he’d entertained the possibility that Jack was dead. That, Ray thought, was a good sign. But then why did it feel so sad?

 

****

Geoff took a long drag from the decanter of scotch. He was long past the point where he felt the urge, or need, to pour his liquor into a glass. After he’d embarrassingly almost-cried on the couch with Ray, he shut himself up in his room and didn’t come out for the rest of the day, deciding to go by Ryan’s advice– now’s the time for mourning.

So he did. He mourned in the only way he knew, drowning his sorrows, pouring libations for a fallen friend back into his own mouth. He wanted to be like Gavin, get so drunk he could barely remember his own name, but his body had long since learned to filter this poison effectively and all he felt was a buzz that left him tired and sadder than when he started.

And when it was midnight and he was alone in the kitchen, searching the kitchen for something else to drink, and he heard the knock at the door, he assumed he was imagining it. Who the hell would think to come here so late? Hell, who even knew their address? All the houses at the edge of Los Santos had been farmer’s homes, once. No one cared who lived there now.

But the knocks kept coming, firm but quiet, so Geoff sighed, set his beer on the counter, and shuffled on unsteady feet to the door. It was dark out, so when he wrenched the door open it took a second for his eyes to find features on the dark silhouette before him. And when they did… he knew those shy blue eyes. He knew those broad hands, which at the time were clutching a duffel bag. He knew every line on that pale face and he knew the thick red beard that cradled his chin.

Geoff had thought he’d have a lot to say if Jack showed up, but all he could manage was, “well, son of a bitch”.


	2. The Prodigal Son Returns

He was thinner than he had been, Geoff mused as he sat across the kitchen counter from Jack. It was instinct where every job meant returning in slightly worse condition– play “spot the differences” with the ones you love. He could have traced every scar on Jack’s face before but the new ones were unfamiliar, the salt-sprinkle of white at his temples, the lines around his mouth– parentheses around a year’s worth of words Geoff hadn’t been around to hear. 

It is the nature of things that are precious and lost to be not exactly in the same condition when they are found, but it didn’t… well, it didn’t matter. Geoff was so glad to have him back just when he accepted that he’d lost him for good, and he was hesitant to fetch the others from their beds; they’d hate him for it in the morning but Jack was his oldest friend. He wanted his company alone for a while, to cling to the scent of smoke that was tangled in Jack’s hair, the slight downward bow of his mouth that did not do justice to his smiles, the thick-knuckled breadth of his hands. This was Jack. Jack was alive.

“I missed you, buddy,” Geoff whispered after an eternity of silence. “Everyone said you were dead.”

“Sounds like you didn’t believe them,” Jack said, his first words, and the familiar hoarse rumble made Geoff want to cry. This was their dance, their _I love you– I knew you weren’t dead_.

“I didn’t. A year, I kept looking, did everything I could, but it’s like you’d been abducted by aliens.” He’d have made an anal probe joke there, before. He did not mention his crisis of faith that evening. “Where were you? What happened?”

Jack shook his head, looked down at his drink. Geoff dropped it immediately, unwilling to save him from death only to lose him to conversation. “Did you miss me?” He tried to smile.

“Every day,” Jack said, and there it was– _I love you too_.

When they were just starting out, some twenty-odd years ago, they had no money for heat, and on winter’s nights they slept in the same bed, curled up like kittens together. Every day was eternal, every night even longer, when the snow piled up outside and their teeth chattered so hard that Geoff chipped one. 

He remembered those nights now and recalled that there were infinite amounts of little moments every single day for lovers to learn the hollows of each others’ souls, and Jack would not be lost if Geoff shared him with the others. There would be time to learn every new scar and freckle and memory. “I’m going to wake the others up. I think they’ll want to see you. Do you feel up to seeing them?”

Jack nodded, a spark in his eyes like striking a tinder, and Geoff smiled. He left him in the kitchen and padded upstairs. Gavin, as his second-oldest friend, was the first to receive the honor of the news, Geoff’s hand curled around the back of his head like he was telling a child Santa had come on Christmas morning. Ryan, the last, had his lights thrown on, and he sat up blinking and irritable.

“The prodigal son,” Geoff announced, and Ryan shook his head.

“What about him?”

“What else,” he said, smiling for real this time. “He returneth.”

***

Geoff could have cried watching all of them. Michael actually did tear up, although when Gavin commented on it, he insisted he didn’t and that Gavin should shut his fucking mouth. Lindsay, ever kind and loving, showered Jack in little kisses, butterfly-light. Ray, who was not quite young enough to be Jack’s son but who treated him like a father anyway, chattered on about nothing in particular with his eyes wide and bright. Ryan, like Geoff, said nothing at all, but watched with a calculating smile.

Jack still didn’t look like himself– too dark, too hard, too distant– but he steadily started responding to the attention, teasing Gavin, asking Ray questions, kissing Lindsay on the cheek in return with Michael’s permission.  
“What are you thinking about?” Geoff asked Ryan, who only sat and watched the commotion from the other end of the counter.

“Not quite man, not quite beast,” he rumbled, as though he were quoting something, though Geoff couldn’t think of what it might be. “I read once that the Japanese repair broken pots with gold to show that something is more beautiful for having been broken. That’s a fine idea, assuming whatever broke can be put back together.” He grinned, all teeth. “It’s Jack and not Jack.”

“Then why are you smiling?”

“I might not be the most fucked up person in the room anymore. And, hey, even half Jack isn’t nothing. It’s not every day Penelope welcomes Odysseus home.”

_Rest in peace_ , Geoff heard Michael’s voice say, a long-lost echo. Was that what he wanted now? Peace?

Eventually, though he was too polite even now to say so, it was obvious Jack was exhausted, and Geoff shooed the others away to lead Jack to the bedroom they’d shared ever since they’d moved in here. He’d claimed at the time there just weren’t enough bedrooms, but the truth was that he and Jack had always shared a room, and though the heat meant they didn’t need to share a bed anymore, it was too hard to sleep without the deep rumble of Jack’s breaths in the bed beside him.

Geoff had left all of Jack’s things untouched, so Jack found his pajamas where he’d always kept them, neatly folded in his chest of drawers. They both changed and Geoff flipped off the light and it was like it always was before, before the black dreams, before a loss greater than any he’d ever known. He reached out his hand between the beds and Jack met him halfway, callused hands clasped like children sharing secrets. “I’m glad you’re home, buddy,” Geoff whispered, but Jack was already asleep.

When Geoff woke, for a moment there was the deep sorrow that had haunted him for a year, but his hand was still clutching Jack’s and he remembered. The hand had long since gone numb, the arm stiff, but there was an ecstatic joy to it, the sweetest ache. He was hungover on affection instead of on whiskey and God, how good it felt.

The next few days were like watching Jack sleep off a bender. He woke on occasion to eat, when Geoff made him, and Geoff could usually get him to agree to a shower to scrub the scent of a missing year from him, replace it with the honey-and-lemon soap that Geoff liked. “It’s like a mother cat licking a human’s scent off her kitten,” Ryan commented once, and Geoff didn’t deny it. The Crew was his only family, and he marked them as children or, in Jack’s case, a partner.

During those few days, Geoff stayed in his room mostly, drinking less than he had in a while but not speaking to anyone really, just keeping watch. After three or four days like that, Jack decided to wake up for good, his body as caught up on lost sleep as it ever would be. Gavin trimmed the split ends of his hair and beard, Michael cooked a big Italian dinner, and Geoff sat at the head of their big dining table grinning as he watched Jack inhale meatballs.

He pulled out a worn leather folder, the contents of which were known only to him but whose presence was immediately identifiable as indicative of only one thing– a heist. “I’m planning a pretty big one here, boys,” he said, and Ray gave him a thumbs-up. “Can’t say a lot because it’s not done yet, but this is the biggest one we’ve done in a while. We’ll do some target practice tonight to make sure we’re still in tip-top shape.”

“Tippy-toppers,” Gavin said, half a correction and half an excited response. Michael rolled his eyes but didn’t grimace. They were all too much looking forward to this, the return to normalcy, the smell of gunpowder and blood on their hands, the fear singing in their veins, sweeter than any drug.

Ryan helped Lindsay with the dishes after, the two of them locked in a duet, her mezzo-soprano bright alongside his deep bass. Michael and Ray ran to the garage like kids on Christmas morning, excited to pull their heisting weapons out of storage and get them clean and ready. Geoff followed with Jack and Gavin.

Geoff handed his favorite pistol to Jack. “You remember how to shoot this thing, buddy?”

“It’s only been a year. How long’s it been since you got laid? Still remember how to use your dick?”

The joke was unexpected but quintessentially Jack, and Geoff’s laughter was sharp and raucous, equally sudden. Geoff watched Jack load the pistol quickly and easily, as naturally as doing it for the hundredth time, and he took his shot carefully at the target they painted on one wall years ago– a perfect bulls-eye, as always. “Not bad, not bad,” Gavin said with a slow clap. “Shame you never want to kill anyone, huh?”

At the word _kill_ , something in Jack’s eyes changed, made them darker, colder. Geoff realized too late what was happening and could say nothing, no word in warning, could only watch as his oldest and best friend in the world turned to Gavin and emptied the barrel into his stomach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you guys liked this, or didn't, or if anything in particular stuck out, please consider leaving a comment! Chapter one didn't get a lot of attention and I don't know if anyone actually enjoys this.


	3. Odysseus Returns

Later, Geoff would not remember if time seemed to slow down. That was the cliché, but the moment was far more about raw emotion. Distantly he noted Michael screaming, tackling Jack, slamming his head into the concrete floor until he passed out. There was the sound of the door as Ryan and Lindsay followed the gunshots. Someone was wailing, a piteous sound, and only later would he realize that it was him.

He scrambled over to Gavin’s body, his face forever frozen in shock and horror. The blood soaked fast through his thin t-shirt and he wasn’t breathing, already he wasn’t breathing, oh God, Geoff would never get to know if he’d had any last words, he’d never get to say goodbye, oh God, oh God…

“Gavin, Gavin,” he whispered, the only word he could find, the name too long and round to sit comfortably in his mouth. “Gavin, Gavin,” a prayer for forgiveness and salvation, a father’s lament for a lost child. He knelt and gathered Gavin’s body into his lap, long legs wrapped in bloody denim curling around his own, an urban Pietà.

The others gathered around him, Ryan with his fists and teeth clenched, Lindsay openly crying. Geoff didn’t realize how hard he was sobbing until he had to take great gasping breaths to replenish lost air. He clutched Gavin’s body close to him and it was already cooling off, Gavin who had always been so warm, oh, God, his first boy, dear to him as any blood son would have been, the boy he’d raised for so long here in his arms…

Eventually the tears stopped and Ray, again playing peacemaker, murmured soothing words into his ear and he let Gavin go, let his body slide to the floor, wiped his blood onto his own jeans. They would have to bury him later– for now, there was the more pressing issue of Jack.

***

Michael was all too happy to drag Jack into the basement and tie him to a chair. Sorrow always came out as anger for him, and Gavin had been his best friend; this sorrow ran deep. Ryan, bloodthirsty bastard though he was, prevented Michael from hitting Jack again. Head wounds were dangerous, and no one wanted him to die before they could get answers.

This time, while Jack was unconscious, Geoff didn’t sit at his side like an anxious husband but instead stayed in the kitchen, remembering what it was like before. Ray attended to Jack as someone whose stitches were neatest and Ryan kept him company, knives at the ready. Lindsay disappeared upstairs to grieve privately and Michael, who did not trust himself anywhere near Jack, sat in the garage keeping vigil over Gavin.

Ryan had promised Geoff he’d tell him as soon as Jack woke, so he had nothing to do but sit and drink. It didn’t satisfy him, didn’t make him feel much of anything, and that in itself was unsatisfying. Everything felt uncomfortable, all of a sudden; his dinner sat heavily in his stomach, the blood dried on his jeans and scraped his skin, the decanter of whiskey was suddenly empty (hadn’t it been full when he sat down?), frustratingly empty. He slammed the decanter onto the marble counter and it shattered and the action of slamming, of breaking something beautiful and worthless, was so intensely, finally satisfying that he kept battering his fist on the counter in the pile of broken glass, and he could hear himself letting out animalistic noises but he couldn’t stop, the hurt felt so good.

He must have been louder than he thought because the basement door opened and Ray appeared, his thin face drawn. “God, Geoff,” he said, rushing over and physically yanking Geoff away from the counter. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You’re covered in broken glass!”

His right hand was bloody, it looked like. A lot of blood. A sacrifice to Gavin, who had lost so much for him, or a punishment, the need to hurt and hurt until his karma was even, or physical pain to match the breathless ache in his heart. “I wanted it to hurt,” he mumbled, and Ray sighed.

“You have to hold the rest of us together,” he said, and to Geoff’s horror Ray’s lip quivered. He bit it back quickly but not before it hit Geoff that Ray was right. “You’re– we were so lost last year when you were so focused on getting Jack back, and after the last few days… you can’t go away from us again, Geoff. We’re not gonna make it.”

“He came back from the dead and then he killed… he killed my boy, Ray. I raised that kid.”

“I know. You practically raised me too, and Michael. You’re the closest thing to a father I’ve ever known. You’re our leader. I– I don’t know what to do without you. I don’t know what to do without you telling me what to do. All I know is that you taught me that death was always, always coming, and I had to keep pretending it wasn’t if I wanted to get by.”

God, is that what he’d taught them? That was a terrible thing to tell a child. “It’s harder when it happens,” he said, so softly it was nearly an exhalation.

Ray nodded, lip quivering again. He led Geoff over to the kitchen sink and ran his hand under the water to wash the blood out of the way, so that Ray could see where to pick the glass out. It took a half hour or near enough, some of the pieces smaller than the diamond in an engagement ring. The pain existed, screaming and fiery, but it was far away somehow, like it wasn’t really him feeling it, so he stood passively and let Ray clean and bandage his hand.

“Just so you know,” Ray said quietly, the first thing he’d said in ages, “he’s awake.”

***

Jack looked like shit. As a bloody rag could attest to, Ray had tried to clean his head injury as best he could, but his ginger hair was still stained and stiff with the blood. He was slumped low in a wooden chair, Ryan leaning on the wall beside him looking like the executioner with his hand poised on the switch. When Geoff stepped closer, Jack looked up at him, his eyes dark, and he nearly snarled. “Leave,” Geoff said, not looking at Ryan but directing it at him all the same.

“I don’t think–”

“ _Leave_.” Ryan didn’t need to be told a third time and when the basement door closed, Geoff addressed Jack. “What happened to you last year?”

Jack struggled against his bindings– rope and cable ties, guaranteed to cut into his wrists. Doubtless Michael planned it that way. “Let me go!”

“What happened, Jack?”

“ _Let me go!_ ”

“Jack, please...” The use of his name seemed to shake him, but he ground his teeth and strained harder against the ropes, as if he could escape through sheer force of will. Jack had always been incredibly strong, and these ropes were old enough to be mildewed; age had likely weakened them. Could he get out?

Once, he could have, but his year away had left him thinner and weaker, and after a minute or so of straining so hard the vein in his neck popped, he sat back, breathing heavy. “Come here so I can kill you!”

“Jack, this isn’t you. What happened to you?” He struggled to keep his voice even, never one to jump wholeheartedly into stronger interrogation techniques.

Jack spat at his feet and Geoff backhanded him with his bandaged hand, a sickening _crack_ that opened up the cuts in his hand and stained the white gauze with red. “You will show me _respect_. I have had a very, very bad day, and all I want to do is go to bed and grieve, only I can’t. I always worried this would happen, but not in my own _house_ by my own partner! You k–” He swallowed back the word _kill_ , remembering what a trigger it was before. “You murdered in cold blood a boy who was like a son to me– to _us_. Don’t you care?”

“Had to. Have to. Let me _go!_ ” The anger was tinged with panic and past Geoff’s anger and sadness he felt sorry for the man tied up in front of him. Something horrible had happened to him and made him not himself, tore him out of his head and turned him into… this.

“I’m sorry,” Geoff said, sinking to the ground and sitting against the wall, far enough that Jack would see him but not reach him. “I’m sorry, Jack.”

That seemed to confuse him. “What?”

“I’m sorry that I didn’t get there soon enough to stop you disappearing. I’m sorry I didn’t try harder to find you. I’m sorry I didn’t realize something was wrong when you came back and I’m sorry I didn’t try harder to make you tell me. Maybe I could have done something to stop this, but I was blinded by losing you and then by finding you.”

Jack looked down at him blinking his wide eyes, and Geoff realized why they were so dark. A shark’s eyes went black before attacking, and that had made him nervous before, but people… there were a few reasons Jack’s pupils might have been blown so wide, but it was obvious enough now. It was fear, and he’d seen Jack afraid before but that was always combined with steely resolution. This was _terror_ , terror that came with absolute knowledge of consequences. What had happened last year?

He sat in silence for maybe fifteen minutes. He and Jack had always been able to tell what the other was thinking and so spending time together wasn’t about conversation, but about the innate human need to be around someone warm and loved and present. He could feel Jack’s fear now, radiating off him like body heat, and couldn’t believe he didn’t feel it sooner. And for other things he didn’t notice sooner…

Jack was soaking wet. Some of it was adrenaline sweat, he could smell it, but the rest seemed to be just water. His shirt clung to his skin and in the chill of the basement at night, he was shivering hard. “Ryan!”

Ryan appeared and took the basement stairs three at a time, knife in hand. “What’s wrong?”

“Why’s Jack wet?”

“Threw water on him to wake him up.”

Geoff shook his head. “Down here? He’s gonna get sick! Dry him off!”

“Shirt’s soaked, he’s gonna have to take it off.”

“Well, don’t untie him. You’ve got a knife. Cut it off him, we’ll dry him off from there.” Ryan growled in the back of his throat, ever vengeful, but he obeyed Geoff and sliced Jack’s Hawaiian shirt around the ropes, tugging it apart in pieces.

At one point the knife slipped, or maybe it wasn’t such an accident, and a thin sliver of red opened up across Jack’s collarbone. He whimpered and Ryan made an irritable noise. “As if you don’t deserve it,” he spat. “As if you don’t deserve a lot worse, traitor. I’d tear you apart and put you back together in the wrong order if only Geoff would let me.” He shoved Jack’s head down to get a better look at his back. “Except it looks like someone already did.”

“What?” Geoff pulled himself heavily to his feet, stumbling a little, and went over to see what Ryan was looking at. He had to bite back a gasp; Jack’s neck and back were crisscrossed in ugly, thick scars, some fresher than others, none of which had been there a year ago. “Oh, God, Jack, what did they do to you?”

“They found me after the heist,” he whispered, and Geoff leaned closer, unwilling to lose this most secret part of Jack. “Our tire blew, Michael disappeared into the weeds. Special ops– took me up to a compound up north. They– they did terrible– they…” He trembled, seemed unable to keep speaking until Geoff braved a warm hand on his shoulder, his bandaged hand. “They spent hours every day b-breaking me… I didn’t know how much time was passing… I don’t remember…”

“Torture,” Ryan supplied, less angry than he had been. “Pretty bad, from the looks of it. Found a trigger word so that they could sic him on us when they were ready, take us out. He must have escaped before they could let him loose, must’ve been what took out Kerry.”

“I didn’t mean…”

“I know, I know,” Geoff said. “Tell us where. Please tell me you know where these bastards are hiding so we can smoke them out.”

He shook his head. “My back…”

“I know, it’s horrible.”

“No, they wrote…”

All at once Geoff understood and bile rose in his throat. “Ryan, help me untie him.”

“ _What?_ Geoff, you would never do that for anyone else…”

“He’s not anyone else! Keep his hands tied if you want, I need to see the rest of his back.” Ryan tied Jack’s hands together like a rancher preparing a horse for execution and Geoff used Ryan’s knife to slice the ropes connecting Jack to the wooden chair. Ryan pushed him to his knees and sure enough, against the pale skin of his lower back, there read in scar tissue: PROP OF LSPD SOCF.

“Oh my God,” Ryan said, eyes wide. “Property of Los Santos Police Department… what’s SOCF?”

“Jack said special ops, could that be SO?”

“Could be. Jack, any idea what CF might stand for?”

“Correctional facility,” he mumbled against his bound wrists. Ryan helped him to his feet and settled him back in the chair, and Jack slumped against it, pale and damp and soft and bloody.

“Ryan, bring me a towel and Ray,” Geoff ordered, and Ryan nodded and headed back upstairs. Geoff stroked some of the hair away from Jack’s forehead as though he were checking for fever. “I’m sorry they did this to you, Jack. Fucking cops. We’ll make this right.”

Jack shook his head, bone-white. “I hurt Gavin, didn’t I?”

Geoff swallowed hard. “It wasn’t you. Not really.”

“But I did. You told me I did.” Geoff didn’t trust himself to speak, just nodded, and Jack started crying. “I’m so sorry. I loved him too.”

Ryan and Ray returned to see Geoff with his arms around Jack, the both of them crying. Geoff cried with relative frequency– at sad movies, when stoned, when he laughed too hard– so that wasn’t all that surprising, but Jack had always been their rock. This was two parents grieving. Ray cleared his throat and Geoff wiped his eyes and stepped away from Jack.

“Ryan,” he said, voice still quavering, “you’re leading the mission. Head north until you find the special ops correctional facility. Do whatever you have to do to get you inside. Figure out who exactly is responsible for this and do whatever you want to them. I mean, fuck, I knew how desperate they were to find us, but I had no idea it would get this bad. They must be out of their minds.”

Ray tossed Geoff the towel and Geoff wrapped it around Jack’s shoulders. “Can I go?”

“No, absolutely not.”

“What? Why? After what they did to Jack, to Gavin? I’ve never strangled a man with his own intestines before but there’s a first time for everything.”

Why the bitter eagerness in Ray’s voice? Why would he delight in killing? Ryan was just fucked up, they all knew that, but Ray had always been a sweet kid. “Ray, I don’t want you to want that so bad…”

“Why? You told me we have to protect our own, you _told_ me. I can’t protect Gavin anymore but the rest of us…”

Geoff’s heart sank. Here he was lamenting that someone had made Jack a weapon, but had he not done the same to the boys he’d raised? “Ray, I want you to get Michael under control. He needs to be in top form and you’re the only one I can trust to keep him sane.”

“ _What?_ Michael can go and I can’t? _Why?_ ”

 _Because Michael is already lost to me_ , he didn’t say. “Do it. After you do, make sure Lindsay is okay. Ryan, steal anything that’s not bolted to the floor and k– destroy anyone who even looks at you sideways. Do you understand?”

“Ready and willing.” He dragged Ray, still complaining, back upstairs, and then it was Geoff and Jack alone again.

“I’m going to find a good therapist who loves cash and discretion and get you some help, okay?” Geoff said to break the silence, heavy with too much pain. “I know it won’t– I know it’ll take time and it won’t be the same after, but if we can start breaking your instant-murder button, that would be the best thing.”

“When’s the funeral?”

Geoff swallowed hard. “I’ll go down to the cemetery tomorrow, find someone I can bribe for a midnight funeral so no one can ask any questions. I’ll make sure it’s nice. He deserved that.”

“He deserved better. So did you.”

“Yeah, buddy, I guess I did. Ain’t that a bitch?”

***

Later, he felt safe enough, or maybe reckless enough, to untie Jack and take him upstairs for a hot shower and clean clothes. He shed his own bloody clothes with some difficulty and vowed to burn them in the morning. When Jack was sleeping, hand sloped to the floor where Geoff wasn’t going to take and hold it, Geoff’s phone beeped with a message from Ryan: a picture of a cop with his shirt torn open and the words PROP OF FAHC carved bloody across his chest, along with the caption “think I should post it to Instagram?”, Ryan’s classic macabre humor. Some victories were more bitter than others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was it good? Was it bad? Who knows! If you have an opinion, consider leaving me a comment! I appreciate you all reading this far!


End file.
